Top 10 Series: Part 9 | Invest in Yourself
9 – INVEST IN YOURSELF
Let’s face it — if you can’t figure yourself out, what good are you to help other people?
In times like these, it’s easy to lose focus and let your self-care take a backseat. But you need to be even more proactive about it now. And since we’re being really honest, let’s not confuse this with being selfish.
You need to fill your cup so it can overflow, and you can give to others around you, not pour your cup out on to others where you’re left high and dry. Make sense?
It’s like when the oxygen masks deploy on a plane — you help yourself first and then the person next to you that needs it. If you’re too worried about helping everybody around you and don’t take care of yourself, you’re useless to everyone because there’s only so much you can do before you’re running out of air.
The same is true in life. If you don’t give yourself an honest chance to regroup for sanity’s sake, you’ll run out of energy, be exhausted, overworked, and most likely irritable and cranky. And who needs that in their life?
Instead, we need to realize there is a healthy boundary where you’re absolutely encouraged to take care of yourself first before committing to each and every person or activity just because you’re asked.
Investing in yourself requires balance, motivation, and a plan that enables you to achieve greater opportunities and results.
Think back to when you first started sports. If you were obsessed with basketball, you would shoot hoops for hours just working on your shot and practicing free throws until you could hardly see outside anymore.
If you loved baseball, you were pitching way past the point where someone would catch for you — isn’t that what nets and backstops are for? The same was true with soccer. You practiced your footwork and kicking those game-winning goals over and over and over.
Why? Because you loved the sport. You wanted to become better. The best. You envisioned yourself winning games and championships and hoisting trophies over your head. You put in the work for yourself and invested in yourself before you even knew what that was. No one even had to tell you.
The older you got, and the better you got, the more you wanted it too. And you kept investing time, effort, and energy into this thing that you loved.
As your career progressed, you knew that you had to take care of yourself if you were going to be any good for the team. If you want to set the team up for success, you have to take care of yourself on and off the court. That’s what it has to be like in your life now if you want to get anywhere, so keep putting in the work to learn and grow.
I know we’re all currently stuck at home, but hello! We have the internet! With all of the technology today, you can easily find what you want to learn on the internet. There are a million podcasts for any possible genre that you’re interested in that can enable you to learn something new FOR FREE.
It’s literally as simple as making the decision to find something you can do in your spare time — driving, working out, cleaning the house. You get the point. I listen to a ton of podcasts and then share them with my husband when I really love the episode.
YouTube offers videos for just about everything as well, including a ton of “how-tos.” Rob looks up videos all the time so he knows how to fix something on my car or put together a new tool because, most likely, someone out there has done it and come across the same issue you’re having. And it’s all free to learn!
There are classes and courses you can pay to take as well, but you can learn so many things — you just have to look for them! Are you going to be more prepared when this is over or stuck wishing you’d done something during this time?
Believe me, you’ll never regret the investment you make in bettering yourself!
Stay strong and take care!
– Lori
Follow Live Like A Champion to be inspired, encouraged, and challenged while learning how to take your winning mentality from the field into the workplace. Be sure to check out the backstory too!
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